Measuring America

What Hacker News says

1. m0ntyMar 2017
   Such carelessness was fairly normal for the time: the surveyors were often under pressure to complete quickly, even in the worst territory, with poor equipment and little actual training. On top of that, they were often bribed to move boundaries one way or the other, or interested themselves in engaging in land speculation, so were less than honest in their surveys.

   Anyone interested in this fascinating history should read Andro Linklater's Measuring America.

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2. antidohDec 2012
   Also recommend Measuring America, very readable history of the American survey. http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=8989073835&...
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3. shagieSep 2023
   The biggest blow was the British privateers... yes, the British are why the US isn't on Metric.

   https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/12/28/574044232...

   https://www.military.com/history/why-pirates-might-be-reason...

   > Thomas Jefferson, secretary of state in 1794, was eagerly awaiting a meeting with French physician and botanist Joseph Dombey. The Frenchman was supposed to meet Jefferson in Philadelphia to discuss a couple of critical international trade issues between their governments.

   > He was also going to revolutionize the way Americans did business.

   > But instead of meeting Jefferson in Philadelphia, Dombey found himself in the Caribbean, where his ship was being boarded by British privateers. Upon learning he was a Frenchman, and a famous scientist at that, he was captured and taken prisoner.

   https://www.nist.gov/blogs/taking-measure/pirates-caribbean-...

   > The marauders now swarming Dombey’s ship were a particular breed of pirate: British privateers—the state-sponsored terrorists of the 18th century. These waterborne gangs had the tacit approval of the government in London to harass and plunder other countries’ maritime commerce and keep part of the spoils as their profit.

   > After seizing control of the ship, the pirates came across a sailor speaking Spanish with a curiously French accent—Joseph Dombey. A French physician and botanist acting under orders from the French government, Dombey had left the port city of Le Havre, France, weeks earlier for Philadelphia and the meeting with Jefferson, the United States’ first secretary of state and future president. But storms had pushed Dombey’s ship off course and deep into pirate territory.

   > ...

   > Some historians view this event as a tragic missed opportunity whose consequences we are still living with today. When the U.S. became an independent nation, it inherited an inconsistent collection of traditional British weights and measures. Congress was aware of the flaws with its British measures, and a congressional committee was formed to recommend solutions. Thomas Jefferson, an admirer of French scientific ideas, lobbied for a measurement system similar to that of France. But Congress didn’t adopt it, and the British-influenced system took hold in the U.S. instead. However, If pirates hadn’t intercepted Dombey on his way to Philadelphia, the situation might be very different today. As historian Andro Linklater writes in his book Measuring America,

   > “The sight [in Congress] of those two copper objects [Dombey’s meter and grave], so easily copied and sent out to every state in the Union, together with the weighty scientific arguments supporting them, might well have clarified the minds of senators and representatives alike. And today the U.S. might not be the last country in the world to resist the metric system.”

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4. m0ntyJun 2019
   Andro Linklater in Measuring America says this is one of the great tragedies of forcibly relocating Native Americans from their traditional lands: the loss of the oral histories bound to routes and landmarks on those lands. So the theory isn't without some precedents. I'm not sure what evidence he puts forward for this though.
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